| 80 |
Detroit Free Press Mike Duffy
Feels like a hit show about to happen. |
| 80 |
Miami Herald Glenn Garvin
Shark works some of the same ground as Fox's new legal drama Justice, but with far more wit and style. |
| 80 |
Washington Post Tom Shales
"Shark" is one of the season's best and fastest-moving new dramas. |
| 75 |
USA Today Robert Bianco
Nothing about this cookie-cutter courtroom drama is really up to Woods' talent, but given his head and a lot of room, he makes it work. |
| 75 |
People Weekly Tom Gliatto
Woods is every bit as entertaining as he strives to be. [25 Sep 2006, p.43] |
| 75 |
New York Daily News David Hinckley
The series... is pure formula, but it's a formula that works. |
| 70 |
Newsday Diane Werts
Good actors can get away with glib, and Woods is one of the best, persuasive enough to have you spotting freshness in the familiar and wisdom in cliches. |
| 70 |
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Rob Owen
"Shark"... is clearly a "House" imitator, but a pretty crisp copy. |
| 70 |
The New York Times Alessandra Stanley
Mr. Woods has found a television role that suits his gift and runs away with it. |
| 63 |
Chicago Sun-Times Doug Elfman
"Shark" now looks like above-average, workaday TV with promise. |
| 63 |
New York Post Linda Stasi
The show is not as good as Woods makes it, but not as bad as some of the new shows. |
| 60 |
Slate Troy Patterson
The show works only because Woods is a honey-baked ham playing a character who lives to be a showman. |
| 60 |
The New Yorker Tad Friend
The lapping tide of gooeyness would be more tolerable if Stark’s empathy made him lose a big case, and if that loss got messy. “Shark,” though, wants to have it both ways: he keeps winning, but now for the right reasons. |
| 60 |
Boston Globe Matthew Gilbert
"Shark" is a very conventional courtroom TV drama about a do-good lawyer, and its only distinction is the ferocious acting of Woods. |
| 60 |
Philadelphia Daily News Ellen Gray
If you watch "Shark," it's going to be for those Woods-ian rants and for the sheer exuberance he brings to them. |
| 60 |
Philadelphia Inquirer Jonathan Storm
Subtract James Woods from Shark, and you'd have an empty carcass. Instead, you have a carcass with James Woods and all his crazy energy inside. |
| 60 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Melanie McFarland
If you don't like Woods' frantic, frequent speeches, and you can't get out of the "Without a Trace" Thursday habit, best to steer clear. |
| 60 |
Newark Star-Ledger Alan Sepinwall
If the "Shark" writers feel the need to, in the very first episode, soften their hero in a way the "House" writers haven't had to do in two-plus seasons, how warm and fuzzy will the character be by November sweeps, let alone the end of the season? |
| 50 |
Variety Brian Lowry
Woods is such a compelling presence that he might be able to elevate even procedural fare. |
| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle Tim Goodman
This is a paint-by-numbers legal series that's as predictable as they come. |
| 42 |
Entertainment Weekly Gillian Flynn
Of course, it's near impossible to break new ground in legal dramas at this point. But Shark doesn't even try to hide its weariness. |
| 40 |
Wall Street Journal Dorothy Rabinowitz
"Shark" suffers from a variety of flaws too numerous to detail here, not least its sentimentality, its wooden characters, its tin-eared dialogue. |
| 40 |
Time James Poniewozik
The problem is, where Hugh Laurie's Gregory House is a hilarious character study, Stark--while played with ebullient aggression by Woods--is just another tool in a suit, and neither the characters, the stories nor the writing rise near House's level. |
| 40 |
Chicago Tribune Maureen Ryan
The level of the writing and the bland supporting cast do not match Woods’ wit, intelligence and slightly scary ferocity. |
| 40 |
Hollywood Reporter Barry Garron
It's an attractive premise but a pedestrian execution. |
| 40 |
Los Angeles Times Robert Lloyd
The episode galumphs loudly across a checkerboard of scenes -- Stark at work, Stark at home, Stark at work at home -- that achieve neither the convincing quality of detailed realism nor the dumb fun of untethered melodrama. |
